There's Still Time
Sermon
Sermons on the Gospel Readings
Series III, Cycle C
Object:
Nowadays the cost of a dinner and a movie keeps going up, and a vacation can be especially expensive, but if I really want to go somewhere I just take the change out of my pocket and lay it on the desk. It's like a time machine. Each coin has a year stamped on it, and just thinking about the year helps me travel back in my memory.
1979 is the year my first son was born and the year I started in ministry. 1981 and 1983 are the years my daughter and second son were born. 1988 is the last time the Dodgers won the pennant. 1990 was when I moved to Indiana from Los Angeles. 1994 and 2004 were the years I turned forty and fifty. 2002 was when I moved to Pennsylvania. And it's getting harder to find, but any coin with 1954 is my birth year.
I enjoy laying out the change in my pocket and just glancing at the dates. It's nice to carry these little reminders of important events, good and bad. But they're just one kind of reminder. We carry all sorts of reminders around. One of the most obvious is our date book, which we use to remind us of important events that are not in the past but in the future. We especially need a reminder for Ash Wednesday. It comes in the middle of nowhere. It's not like Christmas or Independence Day that fall on the same dates every year. Ash Wednesday is all over the map, from early February to sometime in March. What usually happens is that we notice someone with a smudge on their forehead and suddenly realize: was that today? Really, it's not very convenient. The least Ash Wednesday could do is fall on a Sunday.
It is an interruption. And it's an unwelcome reminder of an unpleasant fact. Dust we are and to dust we shall return. The grass withers and the flower fades....
Folks in the middle ages didn't need Ash Wednesday to remind them of this unpleasant fact. Instead of the coins that jingle in our pocket, they carried around a medallion on their person somewhere that was called a memento mori, Latin for "Remember, you will die."
The phrase supposedly had its origins in the Roman empire. When a conquering general would parade through Rome, with all the people shouting his name in acclamation, it is said that a slave would walk behind the general, calling aloud, "Memento mori" as a reminder that nothing lasts, and that he too would die.
Carrying the memento mori brought about a change of perspective. Instead of assuming one will live forever, it made it necessary to remember that our time here is limited, that we don't know how much is left to us, and that we need to make the most of the day that is given to us.
Take a look at some of the portraits of the nobility during the Renaissance and after. The subject of the portrait sometimes holds a skull, or there is a skull on a desk or close at hand. The skull functions as a memento mori as well. Just like Uncle Sam pointing out at you from the old recruiting poster, grim death wants you.
That's the bad news. But this rather startling service meant to be a reminder of a rather unpleasant truth, is also the first step on the road to recovery. And that first step requires a change of perspective.
In today's passage Jesus sends us a message -- stop doing things for show -- do them because you mean them. He said, "And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward" (Matthew 6:5).
After all, you are going to die.
Jesus uses the word hupocrites, which is actually the Greek word for "actor," or "answerer" in the ancient world of theater. Outdoor Greek theaters seated tens of thousands of people, and the acoustics were nothing short of amazing. Even today tourists sit in the far reaches of the stadium seating while tour guides crumble pieces of paper on stage. The tourists can hear the crumbling throughout the vast expanse of the theaters.
Although the acoustics were fantastic, the actors stood far away from the audiences. As a result it was not possible to see their facial expressions, so they wore very tall masks that exaggerated human features so that everyone near and far could see the emotion the actor was supposed to be projecting. The hupocrites wore masks as a matter of course.
That's good for actors -- actors are supposed to project an emotion so clearly that everyone can see it. But people are not supposed to put on a show of false emotions that belong to someone else.
That's why Jesus warns us:
Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven. So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward.
-- Matthew 6:1-2
The image is funny, but there is also something comic -- and pathetic -- when people do things because of what they imagine others will think. It is a source of embarrassment to me, but when I wore ashes as a little child I tried to imagine what people thought when they saw them. I imagined that they saw what a holy and pious child I was. However, I was the kind of child who always came home from school disheveled, wearing stains from the playground, my shirt untucked, and my pants dirty. So when they saw ashes on my forehead most adults probably thought I'd just been playing outdoors.
This is why Jesus says,
And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
-- Matthew 6:5-6
Note that this is not an excuse for cowardice. When it is no longer easy to be a Christian, then it is important that we stand up. Fear can make it difficult for us to live out our faith. Not long after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 the irrational fear arose that loyal Japanese-Americans were somehow a danger to the country. A presidential executive order issued on February 19, 1942, evicted Japanese-Americans from the western states into internment camps. Over 110,000 people were relocated, many with only 48 hours to sell their homes and possessions.
It was not an easy time for Christians to stand up for what was right, but two school teachers from East Los Angeles, Ralph and Mary Blocher Smeltzer, were shocked by the sight of army jeeps with machine guns driving up and down the streets of their city, all the while ignoring the looting that was taking place in the Japanese-American homes.
Although they were threatened and harassed by others, they dedicated themselves to serving the needs of the evacuees. They began that day by serving breakfast to them and later ministered to them in the horse stalls of the Santa Anita Race Track and the LA County Fairgrounds, where they had been taken. They went on to work as teachers at the Manzanar camp, a lonely and cold place along what is now Highway 395, sharing the difficult conditions. They made themselves even more unpopular when they worked to relocate Japanese-Americans to Chicago and New York. History vindicated their stance, as it did again later when Ralph Smeltzer worked with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. during the Civil Rights era.1
When it is dangerous to act like a Christian then it is important to pray in public and to live the gospel in public. It is only when it is easy to do so that the Lord Jesus advises us to pray in private. When we engage in public piety in order to impress others, then we are only impressing ourselves. This is the type of behavior that Jesus warns us against.
Our ashes are a sign that we recognize our mortality, understand the danger of our hypocrisy, and the need for a true relationship with our heavenly Father. It all begins with repentance.
The Greek word for "repentance" is metanoia, turning around, turning away, turning back, and beginning the journey toward spiritual health. When Job truly understands the glory of God and his own position, he says that he would "repent in dust and ashes" (Job 42:6). That's how we repent in the face of God's wrath -- and mercy. It is not too late for us to repent as individuals, as the church, as a nation, and as a world. In their name we rend our hearts and not our clothing. We return to the Lord, our God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.
Finally, Jesus gives us a needed, even welcome reminder. When he tells us to lay up for ourselves treasure in heaven, where neither moth nor rust corrupt, and where thieves do not break in and steal, he is reminding us that there is a worthwhile reason for turning away from the world's temptations. There is something better!
One of my favorite movies is the 1966 film The Trouble With Angels, featuring Hayley Mills and Rosalind Russell. It marvelously chronicles a call to ministry, demonstrating the way God seeks out -- and claims -- the least likely. Set in an all girls' boarding school, it centers around a headstrong, young girl named Mary Clancy who proves she's tougher than all the teachers and Mother Superior combined.
Time and again Mary Clancy clashes with the Mother Superior, and by her final year at the school it's not clear who is winning. However, one night Mary Clancy watches as the Mother Superior rescues a hapless student who is simply unable to complete a sewing assignment. Working until dawn while the student sleeps, Mother Superior creates a wonderful dress from scratch, while telling Mary about how, as a child, she had worked for one of the finest designers in Paris, and dreamed of creating her own line of clothing. Indeed she admits she probably had the talent for it.
Aghast, Mary asks her how she could have left a promising career as a fashion designer. The reply: "I found something better."
Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Back in 1975, Dr. Graydon F. Snyder, known to his students simply as "Grady," wrote an article with the dry title "Sayings on the Delay of the End" in Biblical Research in 1975. The basic message is simple: When prophets talk about the coming end, they're not only reminding God's people that this day could mean bad news, they also talk about a delay -- a delay just long enough for us to repent, and to go forward in God's mission.2
That's certainly what the prophet Joel is telling us. While God's people look forward to the end as a day when their enemies will get what's coming to them, Joel challenges them to look within their own hearts, to repent, and reinstitute justice and righteousness in the land.
This is the heart of Ash Wednesday. Perhaps you will attend a service today where you will receive ashes on your forehead as a symbol of your mortality and repentance. Perhaps this will be a day of private meditation. Perhaps you will start a personal fast or join others in sharing prayer or spiritual disciplines.
No matter how you observe this day, whether you receive ashes on your forehead as a symbol of your mortality and repentance or make it a day of private meditation, engage in a personal fast, or join others in sharing prayer or spiritual disciplines, what matters is that today you begin a journey for Jesus and with Jesus, through death and beyond to resurrection.
While there's still time. Amen.
_______________________
1. For information on the Smeltzers see A Cup of Cold Water, by J. Kenneth Kreider (Elgin: Brethren Press, 2001), pp. 399-401.
2. Graydon F. Snyder, "Sayings on the Delay of the End," Biblical Research 20 (Chicago: Chicago Society of Biblical Research, 1975), pp. 19-35.
1979 is the year my first son was born and the year I started in ministry. 1981 and 1983 are the years my daughter and second son were born. 1988 is the last time the Dodgers won the pennant. 1990 was when I moved to Indiana from Los Angeles. 1994 and 2004 were the years I turned forty and fifty. 2002 was when I moved to Pennsylvania. And it's getting harder to find, but any coin with 1954 is my birth year.
I enjoy laying out the change in my pocket and just glancing at the dates. It's nice to carry these little reminders of important events, good and bad. But they're just one kind of reminder. We carry all sorts of reminders around. One of the most obvious is our date book, which we use to remind us of important events that are not in the past but in the future. We especially need a reminder for Ash Wednesday. It comes in the middle of nowhere. It's not like Christmas or Independence Day that fall on the same dates every year. Ash Wednesday is all over the map, from early February to sometime in March. What usually happens is that we notice someone with a smudge on their forehead and suddenly realize: was that today? Really, it's not very convenient. The least Ash Wednesday could do is fall on a Sunday.
It is an interruption. And it's an unwelcome reminder of an unpleasant fact. Dust we are and to dust we shall return. The grass withers and the flower fades....
Folks in the middle ages didn't need Ash Wednesday to remind them of this unpleasant fact. Instead of the coins that jingle in our pocket, they carried around a medallion on their person somewhere that was called a memento mori, Latin for "Remember, you will die."
The phrase supposedly had its origins in the Roman empire. When a conquering general would parade through Rome, with all the people shouting his name in acclamation, it is said that a slave would walk behind the general, calling aloud, "Memento mori" as a reminder that nothing lasts, and that he too would die.
Carrying the memento mori brought about a change of perspective. Instead of assuming one will live forever, it made it necessary to remember that our time here is limited, that we don't know how much is left to us, and that we need to make the most of the day that is given to us.
Take a look at some of the portraits of the nobility during the Renaissance and after. The subject of the portrait sometimes holds a skull, or there is a skull on a desk or close at hand. The skull functions as a memento mori as well. Just like Uncle Sam pointing out at you from the old recruiting poster, grim death wants you.
That's the bad news. But this rather startling service meant to be a reminder of a rather unpleasant truth, is also the first step on the road to recovery. And that first step requires a change of perspective.
In today's passage Jesus sends us a message -- stop doing things for show -- do them because you mean them. He said, "And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward" (Matthew 6:5).
After all, you are going to die.
Jesus uses the word hupocrites, which is actually the Greek word for "actor," or "answerer" in the ancient world of theater. Outdoor Greek theaters seated tens of thousands of people, and the acoustics were nothing short of amazing. Even today tourists sit in the far reaches of the stadium seating while tour guides crumble pieces of paper on stage. The tourists can hear the crumbling throughout the vast expanse of the theaters.
Although the acoustics were fantastic, the actors stood far away from the audiences. As a result it was not possible to see their facial expressions, so they wore very tall masks that exaggerated human features so that everyone near and far could see the emotion the actor was supposed to be projecting. The hupocrites wore masks as a matter of course.
That's good for actors -- actors are supposed to project an emotion so clearly that everyone can see it. But people are not supposed to put on a show of false emotions that belong to someone else.
That's why Jesus warns us:
Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven. So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward.
-- Matthew 6:1-2
The image is funny, but there is also something comic -- and pathetic -- when people do things because of what they imagine others will think. It is a source of embarrassment to me, but when I wore ashes as a little child I tried to imagine what people thought when they saw them. I imagined that they saw what a holy and pious child I was. However, I was the kind of child who always came home from school disheveled, wearing stains from the playground, my shirt untucked, and my pants dirty. So when they saw ashes on my forehead most adults probably thought I'd just been playing outdoors.
This is why Jesus says,
And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
-- Matthew 6:5-6
Note that this is not an excuse for cowardice. When it is no longer easy to be a Christian, then it is important that we stand up. Fear can make it difficult for us to live out our faith. Not long after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 the irrational fear arose that loyal Japanese-Americans were somehow a danger to the country. A presidential executive order issued on February 19, 1942, evicted Japanese-Americans from the western states into internment camps. Over 110,000 people were relocated, many with only 48 hours to sell their homes and possessions.
It was not an easy time for Christians to stand up for what was right, but two school teachers from East Los Angeles, Ralph and Mary Blocher Smeltzer, were shocked by the sight of army jeeps with machine guns driving up and down the streets of their city, all the while ignoring the looting that was taking place in the Japanese-American homes.
Although they were threatened and harassed by others, they dedicated themselves to serving the needs of the evacuees. They began that day by serving breakfast to them and later ministered to them in the horse stalls of the Santa Anita Race Track and the LA County Fairgrounds, where they had been taken. They went on to work as teachers at the Manzanar camp, a lonely and cold place along what is now Highway 395, sharing the difficult conditions. They made themselves even more unpopular when they worked to relocate Japanese-Americans to Chicago and New York. History vindicated their stance, as it did again later when Ralph Smeltzer worked with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. during the Civil Rights era.1
When it is dangerous to act like a Christian then it is important to pray in public and to live the gospel in public. It is only when it is easy to do so that the Lord Jesus advises us to pray in private. When we engage in public piety in order to impress others, then we are only impressing ourselves. This is the type of behavior that Jesus warns us against.
Our ashes are a sign that we recognize our mortality, understand the danger of our hypocrisy, and the need for a true relationship with our heavenly Father. It all begins with repentance.
The Greek word for "repentance" is metanoia, turning around, turning away, turning back, and beginning the journey toward spiritual health. When Job truly understands the glory of God and his own position, he says that he would "repent in dust and ashes" (Job 42:6). That's how we repent in the face of God's wrath -- and mercy. It is not too late for us to repent as individuals, as the church, as a nation, and as a world. In their name we rend our hearts and not our clothing. We return to the Lord, our God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.
Finally, Jesus gives us a needed, even welcome reminder. When he tells us to lay up for ourselves treasure in heaven, where neither moth nor rust corrupt, and where thieves do not break in and steal, he is reminding us that there is a worthwhile reason for turning away from the world's temptations. There is something better!
One of my favorite movies is the 1966 film The Trouble With Angels, featuring Hayley Mills and Rosalind Russell. It marvelously chronicles a call to ministry, demonstrating the way God seeks out -- and claims -- the least likely. Set in an all girls' boarding school, it centers around a headstrong, young girl named Mary Clancy who proves she's tougher than all the teachers and Mother Superior combined.
Time and again Mary Clancy clashes with the Mother Superior, and by her final year at the school it's not clear who is winning. However, one night Mary Clancy watches as the Mother Superior rescues a hapless student who is simply unable to complete a sewing assignment. Working until dawn while the student sleeps, Mother Superior creates a wonderful dress from scratch, while telling Mary about how, as a child, she had worked for one of the finest designers in Paris, and dreamed of creating her own line of clothing. Indeed she admits she probably had the talent for it.
Aghast, Mary asks her how she could have left a promising career as a fashion designer. The reply: "I found something better."
Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Back in 1975, Dr. Graydon F. Snyder, known to his students simply as "Grady," wrote an article with the dry title "Sayings on the Delay of the End" in Biblical Research in 1975. The basic message is simple: When prophets talk about the coming end, they're not only reminding God's people that this day could mean bad news, they also talk about a delay -- a delay just long enough for us to repent, and to go forward in God's mission.2
That's certainly what the prophet Joel is telling us. While God's people look forward to the end as a day when their enemies will get what's coming to them, Joel challenges them to look within their own hearts, to repent, and reinstitute justice and righteousness in the land.
This is the heart of Ash Wednesday. Perhaps you will attend a service today where you will receive ashes on your forehead as a symbol of your mortality and repentance. Perhaps this will be a day of private meditation. Perhaps you will start a personal fast or join others in sharing prayer or spiritual disciplines.
No matter how you observe this day, whether you receive ashes on your forehead as a symbol of your mortality and repentance or make it a day of private meditation, engage in a personal fast, or join others in sharing prayer or spiritual disciplines, what matters is that today you begin a journey for Jesus and with Jesus, through death and beyond to resurrection.
While there's still time. Amen.
_______________________
1. For information on the Smeltzers see A Cup of Cold Water, by J. Kenneth Kreider (Elgin: Brethren Press, 2001), pp. 399-401.
2. Graydon F. Snyder, "Sayings on the Delay of the End," Biblical Research 20 (Chicago: Chicago Society of Biblical Research, 1975), pp. 19-35.
